


Wild, rough, incalculable road to its end

by Greyneurosis (Spylace)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Harm to Children, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, POV Second Person, Parent/Child Incest, Past Child Abuse, Possibly Unrequited Love, Self-Harm, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1467376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Greyneurosis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hercules had twelve labors to accomplish. You’ve only ever had one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild, rough, incalculable road to its end

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【Translation】Wild, rough, incalculable road to its end](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1896528) by [suirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suirin/pseuds/suirin)



Everyone is born with a name on their wrist—a soul mate somewhere made just for them.

Sounds damned near perfect doesn’t it?

 

Your earliest memory comes from when you are three.

You are crying.

You’re not sure why.

 

The name of your soul mate is on your wrist, scrawled as though written in haste. It is a male hand, a soldier’s hand, like whoever it was couldn’t wait to see you. You used to think he would come and take you away, whoever it was, to a better life, someplace else.

You were so naïve.

 

You are three. You are sitting in the dirt with your power rangers and dinosaurs. You don’t have any friends. You and your mum move around a lot.

Even at three you sense that something is amiss. But you love your mum and she loves you.

For a three year old, that means everything.

 

You brought out a bucket earlier and tipped it over. Now everything is a swirling mess and the green ranger is drowning while the pink ranger bravely rides an Apatosaurus to the rescue. At the back of your mind something tells you, you will regret this. You’re making a mess. Mum hates it when you make a mess. You shouldn’t make mum mad.

There is mud in different places like the seat of your pants and on your knees, in your baby-soft curls and behind your ears. A man is watching you and you turn to watch him because you’re curious. Mum always says, don’t look at strangers, don’t talk to strangers but he seems nice. The day is hot and maybe he’s hot too.

He looks like he might like to play with you.

You raise your hand and wave.

 

He waves back.

 

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!”

 

You remember that day like it was yesterday, mostly the yelling (your mum) but also the warmth. The man’s face has long since faded from your mind. You have impressions of red-gold hair and a sad smile. You remember your mum shouting at the man and that’s what you dream about for a while. But you remember love.

You remember being loved.

You remember his warm embrace.

 

You grow up.

Four, five, six pass by and you’re in school. You make friends eventually. You do after-school activities. You go to church on Sundays because your mum makes you. You sit quietly in your chair and let your mind drift.

You are normal. You’re just like everyone else and you are stupid for believing that was even close to being the truth.

Because you have a name written on your wrist in a jagged gold script. There is a man out there waiting for you, searching for you, wearing your down his arm. You are stupid if you ever thought that was normal.

 

God is never wrong.

“But what if you meet two people with the same names? We have three Michaels in my class.”

“You will know because God will tell you.”

You should be so lucky. You haven’t met a single person named Hercules.

 

Miss Carlson wants to talk about soul mates. She’s recently engaged and very much in love, disgustingly in love.

“Why don’t we play a game? Maybe we’ll find soul mates of our own here.”

Girls have typical names like Mike, Michael, Nate, David.

Boys have names like Kathy, Melissa, Christina and Brittany written on their wrist.

And you—

 

“Charlie?” Miss Carlson asks when you refuse to show yours.

Why bother? You know he’s not here.

The room is closing in.

 

You don’t know why it’s bad to want your soul mate.

It’s a good thing. It’s a beautiful thing.

It’s a bad thing when the names are wrong. It’s bad when the name you have is another boy. It’s bad when your mum hits you over and over and over again.

 

Your mum has a soul mate. His name is a secret.

But you sneak into her room while she’s sleeping and you read the script off her wrist.

She wakes up.

 

You tell mum you don’t want to go to church anymore. You don’t say why. The tears have dried but the pain hasn’t gone away. Your wrists are scrubbed raw, bruised with claw marks that reach past your elbows.

Your mum is quiet today. She smells like smoke but it’s not very strong. She scares you. She is protective, fierce, and angry and she is herself. Your mum scares you a lot.

 

She tells you, you can have a soul mate but you don’t have to love them. Your soul mate can be a boy or a girl or somewhere in between but you don’t have to love them. You can be made to love your soul mate, you can be forced to love them. But you don’t have to love them.

 

She looks tired today. Your mum.

She puts your hand in her palms.

 

You are eleven and the sky is falling.

You’re scared.

You have never been this scared. Not even when your mum was at the peak of her anger. Your personal Vesuvius. Your mum.

But somehow, deep inside of you, you know you will survive this. As the monster rises from the horizon, you know there will be bad days, worse days. Like you know there will be days worth fighting for.

 

When you were three, you were playing with power rangers and dinosaurs and you cried so much when you realized you left them behind. Mum wouldn’t turn back so you smothered your tears against teddy, wishing that the name on your wrist would come to take you away.

It never occurred to you.

Maybe he can’t.

 

As the monster rises from the horizon, something wakes in you, roars in you. Something tugs at your heartstrings and tells you that it’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid.

The helicopters land and hands grab you one by one.

His name is Hercules Hansen and you are in love.

 

After Sydney, everything is different. Your mum slaps you when you tell her you’ve enlisted then hugs you and slaps you again and again, pounding her fist in you back with hands that have long ceased to hurt.

You are in love. You are invincible.

You have no idea what you’re in for.

 

The first thing they take away at the academy is your identity. You’re not the first to think this is a better life than home.

Your scalp is shorn, you are given a set of uniforms olive green. Your fist thuds, thuds, thuds against the first boy who calls you out for the name on your wrist.

You only let go after you’ve sunk your teeth deep into his.

Now all eyes are on you.

 

But your eyes are only for him.

You are tired. You are scared. You study math and science and what makes a monster tick, how to kill a man. Your letters return unopened, unanswered, though sometimes, not many times, your mother sends her love, she sends you cookies and you pick at the crumbs until there’s only oil stain blotting the paper.

But your eyes are only for him and his sun-bright hair, his smile and his warmth. You don’t care the only time you see him are on screen looking at someone else.

You want to prove that you have grown. You want him to see that you’re no longer the scared little kid he saved that day in September.

 

It’s not a bad life. You can certainly think of worse.

 

One, two, three, that’s how many you lay out on the floor before your coach calls time out.

You are PPDC’s youngest ranger yet and you don’t have a partner.

You already know who your partner is, you know who it should be. You follow him, stalk him, you dedicate your life to him but he does not look. Kids call you names, many names, but you don’t care.

 

It never occurs to you that maybe he doesn’t care.

 

The name on your wrist is scrawled, written in haste. It’s a male hand, it’s a soldier’s hand. It’s frankly a shitty piece of writing like someone couldn’t bother looking before they signed off on you.

But you are sixteen and you can’t go home anymore. You are PPDC’s youngest ranger and you have nothing but this. Desperation claws at you five years hence. You never realized what it meant to love someone who can’t love you back.

 

You love him, you love him, you love him so much but he rejects you, spurns you, stares with his brittle eyes. You don’t know what you did wrong. You check yourself, you examine yourself, you’re a good kid, you’re a good ranger, you could be an excellent pilot. If only he would give you the chance.

But he doesn’t.

 

“Sir, it’s Ranger Wright sir.”

 

You are nervous, it feels like your heart is about to leap out of your chest. You lick your lips. You do everything to delay the inevitable and surge ahead. It’s what you are.

It’s what you are.

 

Maybe this is the twelve labors you have been tasked with but hadn’t known it. Maybe while Hercules had twelve, you just had one and this is it.

 _This is it_.

 

“I’m not interested.”

 

You lay on your bunk, your fist twisted in the sheets. You can’t be too loud. It’s an unspoken rule you can’t be too loud. You feel the eyes on you. You give it your best shot.

 

You’re allowed one soul mate in your life. Your chance at happiness and you fucked it all up. It has to be you. What else can it be? And when the hot water sluices down on your spine, an officer fucking into you from the back, you remember what your mother said.

You don’t have to love them. You don’t have to know them to love them. Your soul mate can be a boy or a girl or some shade in between. You can be made to love, you can be forced to love, but you can simply not love.

And you wonder what it is about you that’s impossible to love.

 

There is a name on your wrist written in haste. It’s the name of your twelve labors, a twelve-in-one deal. One night, you decide maybe you don’t want it. Maybe you never wanted it.

You take a razor and do what your mum should have done years ago, Miss Carlson, anyone with two brain cells to rub together. It’s not hard. Your skin parts easily then it’s hard to see.

You’re crying now and you wish you were three.

You don’t remember anything. You remember yelling (your mum) but you remember the warmth and red-gold hair. You remember being loved.

You remember when that stopped being enough for you.

 

You almost die.

 

Almost, almost, almost.

 

The head shrinks wonder if the pressure’s too much for you. You are young. You will survive. You will live in a world poisoned by blue, broiling with monsters and jaeger skeletons.

They ask you if someone’s been hurting you, if this is the first time you’ve hurt yourself.

They ask you if you hate your soul mate. Have you met her yet?

 

They lean close when you tell them your soul mate is a man.

 

How does it feel? How did your parents feel? Did your mum cry? Was your dad angry? Did your parents abuse you? Did they ever touch you in an inappropriate way?

Did you know Ranger Wright, Ranger Hansen’s been asking for you.

He’s your father, did you know?

 _Oh,_ was that supposed to be a secret?

 

Everyone has a soul mate. A designated life partner for that happily ever after. When you were young. You didn’t understand. Love doesn’t conquer all. Sometimes you can be made to love, forced to love, you can love someone from afar without knowing them, meeting them, seeing them. What is the use of the name on your wrist, written in haste? What good is a name you cannot love, you cannot touch?

The gold has tarnished to bronze and so has your love, so has your innocence.

You don’t cry this time. You know what you want.

The doctors make a little tick in the box.

 

You are three, four, five, six, eleven, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and you know what it’s like to have an impossible love. You know that you don’t have to love Herc, you can stop now, you can move on and forget.

But you remember the feeling of warmth and the radiant smile. You remember being loved and that was enough for you why can’t it be enough now?

You remember being in love and you want to try.

God help you but you still want to try.

 

You're young, you don’t know what you want. A year from now. Five years. Can you really say you will feel the same? That you won’t hate him for this, the name he put on your wrist. The name he put on your birth record you’ve never been allowed to see.

“That’s when she knew. The only reason she couldn’t pin me with a sexual assault charge was that she was there holding you. But she screamed that I wasn’t your daddy and that she didn’t want me there anymore. By the time we got the whole mess straightened out, you were gone.”

He looked for you, you know. But he didn’t try hard enough.

He couldn’t and something sears off the corner of your heart like it’s been blackened and scorched, crumbling into dust in a miserable pile at your feet.

But you are your father’s son. You are your father’s soul mate. But you are you first and you can give back just as you’ve got.

“You’re not my father.” You tell him and his face falls because you believe it to be true. He lets out a noise like he’s being stabbed and you go on because you’ve always had a temper. You’re a cunt when you are angry and you are angry, you are absolutely furious. You have no idea that four, five, six years from now, you will die separated from your soul mate by an ocean ten-thousand feet deep. You don’t know yet that you will die alone without a word between you but right now you know this.

And you want this.

“When I was five, mum hit me so hard that she had to take me to the emergency room. She told the doctors I broke my jaw on a swing.”

 

He’s not your father and it’s a name. It’s just a fucking name. It doesn’t change anything, it can’t. He’s your soul mate and you still want him. Maybe in a perfect world, he could have wanted you too.

Hercules had twelve labors to accomplish. You’ve only ever had one.

He kisses your wrist. Just over the name.

 

You kiss him back.

**Author's Note:**

> So like, half a year ago, I found a prompt on PRKM that asked for soul mate someones. I decided, well why not, let's do one about Herc and Chuck. So the file's been sitting around, collecting dust, and because I'd hate to see words-not-even-printed wasted, decided to finish it in 2nd person's POV.
> 
> ...Why?
> 
>  
> 
> Long story short, I just did something terrible.


End file.
